Priests, Women, and Families

by Jules Michelet

All of us laymen, of whatever denomination, whether magistrates, politicians, authors, or solitary thinkers, ought to take up the cause of women more seriously than we have hitherto done.

We cannot leave them where they now are, in hands so harsh and unfeeling, and which are, moreover, unsafe in more than one respect.

Nothing can be more important or more worthy of uniting us together.

Let us, I pray you, come to an understanding about it; it is the most holy of all causes: let there be then a cessation from religious strife. We can recommence our disputes afterwards as much as we please.

And first let us frankly confess the truth to one another. The evil when confessed and known has a better chance of being remedied. Whom ought we to accuse in the present state of things?

Let us not accuse the Jesuits, who carry on their Jesuitical trade, nor the priests, who are dangerous, restless, and violent, only because they are unhappy. No; we ought rather to accuse ourselves.

If dead men return in broad daylight, if these Gothic phantoms haunt our streets at noon-day, it is because the living have let the spirit of life grow weak within them. How is it that these men re-appear among us, after having been buried by history with all funeral rites, and laid by the side of other ancient orders? The very sight of them is a solemn token and a serious warning.

This has been allowed to take place, O ye men of the present day, to bring you to your senses, and to remind you of what you ought to be. If the future that is within you were revealed in its full light, who would turn his eyes towards the departing shadows of darkness and night? It is for you to find, and for you to make, the future. This is not a thing that you must expect to find ready made. If the future is already in you as a bud, transmitted from the most distant ages, let it grow there as the desire for progress and amelioration, a paternal wish for the happiness of those who are to follow you. Love in anticipation your unknown son, for he will be born. Men call him "The time to come." Then work for him.

The day when fellow-mortals will perceive in you the man of future and a magnanimous mind, families will be rallied. Woman will follow you everywhere, if she can say to herself, "I am the wife of a strong man."

Modern strength appears in the powerful liberty with which you go on disengaging the reality from the forms, and the spirit from the dead letter. But why do you not reveal yourself to the companion of your life, in that which is for you your life itself? She passes away days and years by your side, without seeing or knowing the grandeur that is within you. If she saw you walk free, strong, and prosperous in action and in science, she would not remain chained down to material idolatry, and bound to the sterile letter; she would rise to a faith far more free and pure, and you would be as one in faith. She would preserve for you this common treasure of religious life, where you might seek for comfort when your mind is languid; and when your various toils, studies, and business have weakened the vital unity within you, she would bring back your thoughts and life to God, the true, the only unity.